Advanced Energy Storage Market to Reach $19 Billion by 2022

The advanced energy storage systems market is expected to grow from an estimated $12.73 billion in 2017 to $19.04 billion by 2022.

According to MarketsandMarkets (MnM), a research and advisory firm, the market will be led by major players such as LG Chem Ltd., Samsung SDI, GS Yuasa, ABB Ltd., BYD Company Ltd. and Tesla Inc., among others.

In terms of investments, renewables are becoming the solitary choice all across the world for expansion, upgrading, and the modernization of power systems. A recent phenomenon being that wind and solar energy accounted for close to 90% of all the renewable energy investments in the year 2015. Also, as costs keep nosediving, there is an expectation that the cost of onshore wind, biomass, and hydropower and geothermal are competitive with coal, oil and gas-powered power plants. Cost of wind turbines have fallen by a third, while that of solar modules by around 80%.

Cost and Regulations

The report states that technology costs are decreasing, owing to the large-scale investments in the Lithium Ion Batteries, with larger plants contributing to the economies of scale. At the same time, higher levels of R&D for batteries with rapid discharge cycles, keeps costs at bay. In terms of regulation, many things are making way for energy storage systems implementation, including increased renewable energy sources, augmented system flexibility and technology advancement factors.

Current Scenario

The MnM report states that the global advanced energy storage systems market is dominated by the Asia Pacific (APAC) region accounting for the largest share because of increasing renewable energy investments, regulations demanding energy investments, regulations demanding energy efficiency and electrification of the transport sector.

“Advanced energy storage systems are gradually becoming the perfect partner along with renewable energy,” writes report author Rajat Kumar, head of research at MarketsandMarkets. “In comparison to the conventional energy sources, the renewable energy sources offer flexibility, energy efficiency, stability and resilience of supply. The contribution of APAC is to the tune of 40% of the global market and will grow at the highest CAGR of 9.8% in the coming years. This is likely to be fueled by South Korea as a region expected to register a CAGR of close to 14.5% in the next 5 years.

This growth will be closely followed by the European market that will witness a CAGR of 8.5%. Commercial & residential applications with larger impetus on systems demanding large scale storage solutions are the need of the future and with a likely skew for grid services as well. The spurt in the investment of renewables and demand for energy efficiency will continue to drive the advanced energy storage systems market.”

In terms of technology, the electro chemical segment holds a sizeable portion of the market to the tune of 77% followed by Mechanical at 18% and thermal storage and others at 5%. The electro chemical segment includes lithium-ion battery, sodium sulfur (Na-S) battery, lead acid battery, flow battery, nickel metal hydride and nickel cadmium batteries. Thermal energy storage includes thermos chemical, latent thermal and sensible thermal. Mechanical energy storage technology comprising of pumped hydro, flywheels and compressed air energy storage as well as liquid air energy storage and others that include hydrogen storage, synthetic natural gas and supercapacitors.

The Future

MnM’s report states that most of the untapped potential for the advanced energy storage market is likely to be in the commercial & industrial (C&I) storage and microgrid solutions. “As battery prices tank, customers who are faced with rising demand charges and associated energy prices, will see the light of the day with lower prices of renewable energies,” writes Kumar. “The expected battery prices are in the region of $120 per KWh by the year 2030 as against $300 per KWh now $1,200 per KWh in the year 2010.”